It hit the news like a super-slow-motion lightning bolt last week. The government says that we are ingesting too much fluoride and that we need to lower the amount we’re dumping into our water supply!

Oh really? You don’t say? And it took it…what...about 50 years to finally reach that conclusion? Pardon me while I don’t look impressed.

So is the government concerned about the IQ-lowering brain damage this chemical additive is causing in our children? Or perhaps it’s the havoc that this toxic waste might be doing to our thyroids that has the government concerned? Maybe it’s a fear of the connection between weakened bones and fluoride that has finally raised the red flag?

No, in what may be the best-ever illustration of irony to date, the concern is that this so-called “tooth-decay-preventing miracle” has actually been damaging our kids’ teeth.

Yes, that’s right, the anti-fluoride “nuts” have been right all along. It turns out that excess-fluoridation in this country has led to fluorosis…a condition that causes spotting and streaking on the teeth and in extreme cases pitting and weakened tooth enamel (though the government assures us that these extreme cases are rare).

Of course, the change the government is recommending is negligible at best. Previous fluoridation recommendations were set at 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams per liter of drinking water. They have now lowered that recommendation to 0.7 across the board.

And before we start celebrating this tiny victory, you should know that the jury is still out on whether the Environmental Protection Agency will lower the maximum legal amount of fluoride allowed in water (which is now currently over five times higher than the new maximum recommended amount).

With strong evidence of the additive’s effect on childhood IQ levels and growing connections between fluoride and other health problems, most European countries decided some time ago to stop dumping this waste product of fertilizer processing into their water supplies. But the United States is still toeing the line that fluoride is beneficial to our dental health, and there appears to be a flat out refusal to admit to any possible negative impacts beyond teeth discoloration.

The fact is that it already took 50 years for the government to just lower the recommended amounts of fluoride being adding to our water, so I think it’s safe to assume that the complete removal will not happen our lifetime.

If, however, you are concerned about fluoride (not to mention the countless other dangerous contaminants in our water supply, ranging from the carcinogenic hexavalent chromium to endocrine-disrupting atrazine), you should consider purchasing a reverse osmosis (RO) filtering system for your home. They are becoming easier to find and more affordable as the demand for them increases.

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